This invention relates generally to communication systems and more particularly to a patient care system for use in hospitals and other patient care environments to provide a means for a highly efficient and accurate multiple-message and information communication facility.
As recent discoveries and developments in electronics and the physical sciences are applied to the medical profession, significant inroads are being made with regard to the diagnosis and treatment of a wide variety of human afflictions. Today it is possible to accurately measure many more variables which may be related to a patient's illness and to correlate those variables quickly and easily into a new meaningful patient diagnosis and/or statement of condition. Moreover, technological developments are being applied to all aspects of the hospital environment including radiology, laboratories, intensive care units, cardiology, nuclear medicine and even dietary units and prescription supplies. These advancements in the state of the art not only provide better and faster care for patients but also provide such improved care using fewer personnel.
The increased availability of patient-related data and information has created a need for improved communication systems throughout the many departments and laboratories in a hospital environment especially since much of the data is interrelated and data input from one source should be made known and coordinated with many other departments in a timely and efficient manner.
Many hospitals today have computerized communications systems in order to rapidly and accurately disseminate patient-related data to various communications stations throughout the patient care facility. Such systems include a main facility computer with communication terminals located throughout the facility at strategic locations. For example, there may be two or three nursing stations on each floor of a hospital with each station having a communication terminal and being responsible for the care and treatment of a predetermined number of patients in the immediate area. Additionally, each specified area, such as radiology, pharmacy, laboratory and nutrition, may have a separate terminal by which communications and test results may be sent to and/or received from any other specialized area or nursing station terminal.
Notwithstanding the relative sophistication of these communication systems, their efficiency has been limited since inputs are required from operating personnel and to the extent that the systems are complicated to format and/or operate (i.e. not "user friendly"), extensive specialized training or the hiring of specialist personnel may be required. Moreover, many such systems are "serially oriented" and can transmit or receive information or data related to only one patient at a time or to only one terminal at a time or with regard to only one treatment activity or "work-to-be-done" item. For example, in a typical communication system, the operator may type the entire message and perhaps for each destination. The message may contain patient names and locations, doctors' orders, and text. Such an arrangement requires an operator to repetitively input much of the same data with regard to each individual patient, destination, and/or treatment activity. Therefore, to the extent that these communication systems are serially oriented, duplicative of operator inputs are required and the full efficiency potential of the system is not being realized. In addition, with an improved communication system, highly-skilled patient care personnel would be able to devote more of their time to the care of patients and less time operating a communication terminal.